Swallow is the anti-foodie food magazine, a palate-pleasing respite from gastronomic faddism. Each issue is akin to the perfect dinner party where the food is central to the event, but the conversation veers wildly around the table from topic to topic before eventually returning to the procession of morsels at hand.

Founded in 2009, each issue of Swallow is dedicated to exposing a different, often overlooked destination. The first—The Nordic Issue—revealed the then nascent Scandinavian food scene. The second one alighted on points along the Trans-Siberian express. And the third and latest issue squares its sights on one of the world’s most vibrant and exciting metropolises: Mexico City.

Released in a high-end format comparable to a coffee table book, Swallow ventures far beyond the culinary realm and features notable contributors more often found within the worlds of art and fashion. Swallow was recently named a finalist in three categories—including “entire issue design”—in the 2013 Society of Publication Designers awards. Swallow has previously garnered three British D&AD (Design and Art Direction) awards for each of its magazine related categories—photography, design, and illustration.

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Issue #3 The Mexico City Issue

The sights and smells of Mexico City. Placed throughout the issue are 20 scratch-and-sniff stickers, each impregnated with the aroma of one of the the city’s many neighborhoods. Also, matadors, wrestlers, hungry cabbies, dancing girls, sacrilegious iconography, Aztec beverages, hazardous eats, ultimate tacos, dirt-cheap candy, preeminent cantinas, and more.

Softcover clothbound book, 160 pages, 9" × 12"

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Issue #2 The Trans-Siberian Issue

Accounts taken along the route of the Trans-Siberian Express. From Moscow to Beijing, via Mongolia, Swallow focuses on the landscapes of lesser known culinary destinations. Stories include tea as currency, country living, porcelain politics, Russian aesthetics, Mongolian hospitality, smoking fish, illustrated full frontals, and more.

Hardcover book, 154 pages, 9" × 12"

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Issue #1 A Nordic Issue

While now established as a global culinary brand, the New Nordic scene was nascent when Swallow published its first issue. Featuring stories on piggy parts, Greenlandic monsters, alcoholic spasms, Nordic fishermen, animated fairy tales, macabre mushrooms, a young René Redzepi, and more.

Hardcover book, 130 pages, 9" × 12"

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BLACK DEATH

From its illustrious past as an essential ingredient in the lost art of alchemy, to its current inclusion as a binding agent in industrial glue, no where is ammonium chloride’s (chemical formula, NH4CL) use more pervasive than its over-representation in Nordic licorice sweets. Commonly referred to as salmiakki, this corrosive salt is present in all manner of salted licorice from Iceland to Denmark, through Finland. In fact, the latter holds the substance in such high regard that to remove salmiakki (a Finnish word, natch) from the local food chain would result in a defined decimation of the nation’s candy reserves. From tongue tingling powders to saliva stimulating chewing gums and de-rigeur black chewy lozenges, it’s the Finnish Tyrkisk Pyber (Turkish pepper) candy where salmiakki reaches its apotheosis. A hard and somewhat spicy boiled licorice bonbon, the centre of this black gem is loaded with reserves of salty goodness, suddenly released after but minutes of contemplative sucking. Once depleted, the black husk is quickly dispersed and it’s on to another. Mmmmmmmm…

More curious is salmiakki’s perverse standing in Finnish drinking culture. By taking a large packet of Tyrkisk Pyber, and coaxing it to dissolve in a litre bottle of cheap vodka (placing the vessel in a dishwasher is an effective means of ruffling the candy into submission), one is left with a staggering liqueur referred to colloquially as salmari—brilliantly endowed with the teenager’s preference for tasting entirely non-alcoholic (yet rather alarmingly of chemical salt, refined sugar and molten licorice). Knocked back with alarming frequency in seedy bars and clubs across the North, a night on salmari results in perhaps the worst ever morning-after experience—a black mark on the Nordic countries if ever there was one!